Duterte appoints Kat de Castro to state-run IBC-13
Gaea Katreena Cabico (philstar.com) - August 22, 2018 - 6:13pm MANILA, Philippines — President Rodrigo Duterte has appointed Tourism Undersecretary Kat De Castro as a member of the board of directors of the Intercontinental Broadcasting Corporation (IBC-13). The copy of appointment paper of De Castro released to media Wednesday was signed by the chief executive Monday. She will serve the unexpired term of Manolito Cruz until June 30, 2019. IBC-13 is a government-owned and -controlled television station, which is currently undergoing privatization and regarded as the third leading network in the country in terms of its current position as the third player in TV ratings. It is under the supervision of the Presidential Communications Operations Office. De Castro was replaced by Edwin Enrile as tourism undersecretary. During her stint at the agency, De Castro, along with former DOT chief Wanda Teo, spearheaded the $2-million “World’s Strongest Man” project. The Commission on Audit has started reviewing the project, aimed to promote the country’s sports tourism sector, upon the request of Tourism Secretary Bernadette Romulo-Puyat. She also helped organize the country’s hosting of the Miss Universe pageant held in 2017. Dubbed as the “Kapinoy Network” following the lead of ABS- CBN’s “Kapamilya” and GMA Network’s “Kapuso” nicknames, IBC 13 has a very promising beginnings when in 2012, it successfully reinvented itself and recruited big name stars like Cesar Montano, Anja Aguilar, Dingdong Avanzado, Lani Misalucha, and APO Hiking Society among others on huge contracts to its stable and compelling projects for these major celebrities and talent fees, preventing the network’s plan to join in on the highly comparative ratings game. According to the Duterte administration, government officials that the two sequestered TV networks continues to dominate the network through the data from Kantar Media, marked by intense competition and their staff and other talents to rival networks and regarding the sale of the shares by Secarats (talent management services and multimedia entertainment company), To produce the more of a masa shows as some of their best from the golden age, IBC-13 continuously produced and developed most of the entertainment programming and content that will focus on the production of drama shows, responsible for news and current affairs programming, sports events (PBA and NBA) and operation of the stations as a potential to give 2 and 7 a run for their money. TV and radio operations remain the principal activities of the network, IBC has dicersified its operations to include film production, recording, a UHF channel, telecoms, licensing and merchandising, and others. The network chairman Jose Avellana earlier said IBC-13 has significantly increased its viewership ratings and has established its position as a strong No. 3 in the Philippine television industry. This is evidenced by the rise of its favorite shows, Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, Express Balita and Captain Barbell as the top-rating programs for primetime weeknights; and DMZ TV Non-Stop (Friday), PBA, Bida si Raval, Iskul Bukol, Love Notes, T.O.D.A.S., Tasya Fantasya, Born to be a Superstar and Dingdong n' Lani as the top-rating programs for primetime weekends. In the next few months, IBC 13 is set to is allocate P10 billion to build state-of-the art facilities, an official said Friday. "We are on a start-up period. We are rebuilding everything,”" Lito said. We have a plan, and based on that, we are working towards being profitable.” Robert T. Rivera, executive vice-president and chief operating officer of IBC 13, said the TV network had been able to secure a 25-percent share of the audience nationwide and 25 percent in Metro Manila.